Abstract
Purpose: We examined the usefulness of POSSUM for evaluating the risk of head and neck cancer reconstruction surgery.
Methods: A total of 188 patients who underwent head and neck reconstruction after cancer extirpation between January 2010 and December 2011 were studied. The predicted risk of complications was calculated by the POSSUM score, and compared with the actual rate of perioperative complications.
Results: Perioperative complications occurred in 35 patients (19%), consisting of systemic complications in 17 patients (9%) and surgical site infection in 20 patients (11%). When the patients were divided into a perioperative complication group and a no complication group and compared, a significant difference between the two groups was observed in terms of predicted postoperative rate calculated from POSSUM score (p = 0.01).
Discussion: POSSUM is useful as an indicator for evaluating the risk of head and neck cancer reconstruction surgery. The cutoff value of the POSSUM score calculated from the ROC curve using Youden's index was 45.9%. Therefore, patients may be considered to be at high risk of perioperative complications when the POSSUM score is 45.9% or higher.
